Government has plan to modernize medical records

Published 8:00 pm, Sunday, July 25, 2004

As the government makes long-term plans to modernize the nation's health care system with information technology, bringing patient records and prescriptions out of the realm of ink and paper and into the computer age, MidMichigan Medical Center's staff is trying to decide where to start in the same process.

The administration's technology strategy report for health care regards the government's role as one of mainly setting goals and working with the private sector to establish product and technology standards so the computer systems of doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists and insurers can efficiently communicate and share information.

"The bulk of everything in hospitals is now on paper," said Carol Jaeger, the Midland hospital's director of health information services. "You've got to pass the paper from this person to that person."

One reason why computerization has gone more slowly in the health care industry than, say, banking, is so many facilities will have to be brought together, Jaeger said. Now, hospitals, doctors' offices, clinics and urgent care facilities often keep records in different ways.

"Even using the same language is a big deal," Jaeger said. "It's probably going to be done in bits and pieces.

"Many times, computers don't talk to each other very well."

The government should work closely with the private sector to accelerate the drive for common product standards for electronic health records so data can be shared among different institutions and personal information is kept secure, according to the report.

Protecting patients' information is the biggest worry, Jaeger said.

For "anything that is set up to share this much information, and particularly sensitive health information, there are going to be a lot of things put into place to make sure the right person is reading it," she said. "Who all is going to see this? And could somebody see this that shouldn't?"

The savings from making the transition to electronic health records, according to administration officials and health care experts, could be sizable both in terms of dollars and lives. The report estimates that if most patient records were in electronic form, the savings would be about $140 billion a year, or nearly 10 percent of the nation's annual health care bill. But Jaeger said it's likely to cost hospitals something in the tens of millions of dollars to create a complementing system.